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I have a pretty unpopular and attitude about this. Cost of living adjustments are literally that: salaries adjusted so that you get the same lifestyle whichever
by madrox 6y ago
I have a pretty unpopular and attitude about this. Cost of living adjustments are literally that: salaries adjusted so that you get the same lifestyle whichever city you happen to be living in. To argue against a cost of living adjustment in a downward direction means you want to live better elsewhere.
Which is really the elephant in the room in these conversations. People want to live like kings in a $500/mon 3 bedroom house in the middle of nowhere while making a salary level that only exists so that those people could afford SF housing. Basically, people want to get rich.
Which leads me to my real unpopular rant: this is the same group that generally believe CEOs make too much money. Yet when given the opportunity to make the argument that we should be making closer to the same as those around us, they don't want equality; they want their turn to be on top.
- ironmagma 6y agoCompanies paying less “because they can” as opposed to “because they must” will always lose out to the companies that will pay more “because they can” in an employee’s market. And if the both companies are in the same market, that means that both the work and the profits are of similar kind. So it’s not exactly wise to adjust your wages down just because it seems like there’s nothing stopping you. Pay your employees according to the value they produce, not where they produce it from.
- madrox 6y agoThere's a Pareto optimal middle ground here, because companies that pay more don't want to pay a lot more. They want to pay enough to beat their competitor's offer. All companies involved aren't interested in that number going higher than it has to. This is why cost of living adjustments exist in the first place. The pandemic didn't invent remote work.
- ironmagma 6y agoThe pandemic didn’t invent remote work, and that’s why even after the pandemic, some companies will pay the same regardless of where you live, just as they did before. It’s up to the employee to choose the place that they most prefer to live in that case, which maybe it’s a city that gives them high margins or maybe it’s one that gives them a nicer quality of life per some arbitrary metric.
- ironmagma 6y agoKeep in mind, as well, that employees are already not forced to live where their employer wants them to be. They can live far away from work, and then commute an absurd amount each day, then get their paycheck and keep their cheap cost of living too. We don't pay someone who comes into the office less just because they live far away. It's just that in that scenario, a lot of carbon is being emitted, and the employee's life is being wasted needlessly.
- nunez 6y agoCouldn't have said it better myself. Making SF-level money in Montana for a job that isn't normally worth SF-level money everywhere is a bug, not a feature. This is one of the reasons why I really like consulting. One's value is directly tied to two things: bill rate and margin. If you can justify increasing your/the company's rate and increasing your/the company's margin, you (usually) make more money. Doesn't matter where you are.
- csense 6y agoI charge $X to provide services remotely (on an hourly or monthly basis, whatever). Whether I live in a cheap or expensive area is completely irrelevant to whether it makes sense for the company to pay me $X. As someone from the Rust Belt, a company that says "we'll only pay you more if you move to an ExpensiveCoastalCity" is insulting. Such a policy feels like coastal elites actively trying to keep everywhere but NY and SF poor.
- goldenManatee 6y ago> they don't want equality; they want their turn to be on top Oh. The timeless human condition, and American embodiment of “pursuit of happiness”?